I spent a day in Zermatt waiting for my luggage to catch up from a missed connection in Moscow. Once received I hiked up to camp at Gornegrat. The next day was light as I just moved camp to 3310m above Monte Rosa hut. The following morning I got started at 5:45, made it up to Silbersattel and Nordend (9:20am) before ascending the descent gully to Dufourspitze. I went down the opposite ridge and back to the hut by 2pm. Then back to town same day by 7pm. Good conditions all day.

After 2 days of stroms and snowing, we reached the top.
Just few (following our path) tried to reach dufour, unsucesfully for the too much snow.
Over 4000 meters more than 40cm of fresh snow required all our energy to reach the top.
Cornices, steped rocks full of snow: wonderfull but exhausting
Valerio, Carlo, Marco

Ascended and descended the S arete. Sumited around 11am.Beautiful weather and a great but long day. This was the last of seven 4000ers I climbed in 12 hour period. Left KM at midnight and hit everything along the way to this point. I was toast.

After our retreat from the Monte Rosa traverse we descended from the summit of Dufourspitze to Silbersattel where we camped.

It wasn't a long way from the sattel to the summit of Nordend.

Achtung! There is a huge cornice in half way of the snow ridge. In June you could not easily see it because of the icy surface of it and it's surroundings. Try to keep a good distance to the edge. I accidentaly pushed my foot though the cornice and it would have been a long and steep way to Italy.

A few years ago now ... basically a big snow walk, a long way up from the Monte Rosa hut especially if you're the first up for some days and there's new snow. The ridge towards the top is sensational and the summit feels like a fairly far-out place to be. There is a small turret of rock at the summit -to the amazement of me and my mate, a pair of french-speaking mountaineers who had followed us up the route didn't fancy the last climb up the (snowy) rocks and turned back. I hope that was a joint decision ...

Nordend was the unplanned end of a one-week-trip that started at Simplon pass and that was changed several times in between. 4 of our group of 8 reached the top. We choosed Nordend because it is more easy than Dufourspitze and we did well. Only 2 other climbers did it and the final snow ride was extraordinary.